


Different Kinds of Partners

by squireofgeekdom



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Aromantic, Aromantic Character, Aromantic Matt Murdock, Asexual Character, Asexual Foggy Nelson, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-22
Updated: 2015-10-22
Packaged: 2018-04-27 13:23:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5050189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/squireofgeekdom/pseuds/squireofgeekdom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Look, I don’t know what you’ve been told, but, like, the pitter-patter heart thing? It’s not the end all, be all.  It’s not an automatic trump card. Like, I’ve had the pitter-patter heart thing for lots of people, and those people? They’re not nearly as important to me as Nelson and Murdock. I don’t want to be partners and fight crime and - and narrate the action scenes in Jurassic Park with all the pitter patter heart people.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Different Kinds of Partners

**Author's Note:**

> For all my fellow Aros out there in need of some reassurance.

The red might deflect a knife, depending on the angle.

Not that useful for someone who can’t see, he thinks, clutching his side. But eventually he’ll figure out which parts are red, by process of elimination.

Assuming he isn’t eliminated first.

This knife had definitely hit a red patch, he thinks as his side screams at him. He staggers up the stairs to his apartment and makes for his phone. Claire’s out of town, but - 

Foggy’s on a date.

It’s Foggy’s date night with Marci, and he can’t believe he’d forgotten because Foggy had been practically thrumming with excitement all day. 

He can’t interrupt that. He’d be a terrible friend if he interrupted that. 

He puts down the phone, reaching around the counter for the first aid kit.

Now that he’s caught his breath, he can tell that the wound isn’t near anything important. The red must have been just enough to keep it from tearing through his intestines. The blood flow isn’t quite as heavy now. 

He doesn’t trust his hands to stitching right now, so he pulls out tape and bandages with the ease of rote habit. Pulling the fabric aside, he holds the wound together and tapes it shut, laying the cotton bandage over and taping it on. There are smaller injuries, but he won’t deal with them right now. Right now - well, his couch is close enough.

\---

He wakes up and his phone is buzzing and there’s pounding on the door. 

“Murdock! Open up! C’mon!”

Foggy. 

He reaches out for his clock before he gets a sense of the room and realizes he’s in the living room, not his bedroom. How long has he been asleep?

“Matt!” 

He heaves himself up from the couch and is immediately reminded of the wound in his side. He staggers to the door and opens it. 

“Jesus Matt, what the Hell?”

Oh, right. He’s still wearing the outfit.

“What time is it?”

“It’s nine in the morning, Matt, Jesus, what the hell happened?”

“Just a little disagreement with a guy. With a knife.” He amends.

“Jesus.” Foggy moves towards him and reaches out to pull the uniform away from the side wound, revealing the hasty bandaging job. Matt winces. “You patched this up yourself?”

“Claire’s out of town.”

“Fuck, dude, why didn’t you call me?”

He tries to grin. “You were on a date.”

“Fuck - okay, you’re going to sit down, and I’m going to clean this out and stitch it up properly. Jesus.” He drags Matt back to the couch. “For fuck’s sake Matt, I don’t care if I’m meeting the Pope, shit like this happens, you’ve got to call me.”

“You’re not Catholic.” Matt says.

“Yeah, well, all the more reason to call me.” Foggy mutters. “Jesus, Matt, why would you think that this wasn’t worth interrupting my fricken date for? You could have died.”

“I wasn’t going to die.” He says as Foggy rifles through the first aid kit. “It’s a flesh wound.”

“Yeah, and you’re the Black Knight.” Foggy grumbles. “New rule, any form of bodily harm is fair game for date-interrupting, deal?”

“If you say so.”

“I mean it,” Foggy says, moving his arm towards him, then pauses as he opens what must be the antiseptic. “I just jabbed my finger at you sternly. But you already knew that.”

“It’s harder to tell when I’m tired.” Matt admits. 

“Yeah, ‘cause you’ve been bleeding out on your couch for like, hours.” Foggy tears off the bandage. “You never have a problem interrupting when Karen and I are at work late, or when we’re drunk at Josie’s.” 

He shrugs. “You’re not on a date.”

“Dude, dates just don’t trump everything else like that. That’s not how it works.” Foggy says, leaning in to scrub out the wound with antiseptic. Matt winces. “Like, yeah, I schedule date nights with Marci, but I also schedule the Team Avocado movie nights. Movie nights are sacred.”

Matt tosses his hands in a vaguely unconvinced way. “Hey, you know me. I don’t do the dating thing much.”

“Yeah, well -” Foggy picks up the needle. “Wait, is this like, an Aro’ guilt thing? Dude, I thought you had enough with the Catholic guilt going on.”

“It’s not -”

“Look, I don’t know what you’ve been told, but, like, the pitter-patter heart thing? It’s not the end all, be all. It’s not an automatic trump card. Like, I’ve had the pitter-patter heart thing for lots of people, and those people? They’re not nearly as important to me as Nelson and Murdock. I don’t want to be partners and fight crime and - and narrate the action scenes in Jurassic Park with all the pitter patter heart people.”

Matt pretends to be too distracted by the stitches to reply. 

“Of course, you’ve probably been able to tell whenever I’ve had the pitter-patter heart thing for a person, haven’t you?”

“Yeah.” He says. It made it easier to figure out that there was something wrong with him early on, hearing it in other people and never in himself.

“Oh my God. This - this is why you’ve been avoiding Karen.” Foggy ties off the stitches and then jabs his finger at Matt. “It’s some weird aromantic inferiority complex, and you think -”

“Look, Foggy, you know every time I try to have a - a relationship, it crashes and burns. And - I already went through that with Claire, and I - I care about Karen, and I like working with her, and I like that we can just - we can have movie nights and watch Jurassic Park and you guys can narrate the scenes and I just - look, I just don’t want that to crash and burn. That isn’t fair. No to her, and not to you, and -”

“Hey. Hey - look.” Foggy puts a hand on his face. “Nothing’s crashing and burning, alright, Matt?”

He takes a deep breath. “Yeah. Okay.” 

“Look, if you don’t want anything with you and Karen to change, that’s cool. But if you want something different - note how I’m not saying ‘more’ - you should talk to her about it.”

He chokes off a laugh. “That’s not fair to her.”

“What? Two grown adults, sitting down and talking about what they might want or not, and seeing if they can come to terms with something they both want? How is that not fair?”

“She deserves something better than -”

“What? Than you? I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but other than the crazy vigilante business - which is going to give me a heart attack someday - you’re pretty awesome. And I mean, I don’t know, Karen might dig the superhero thing. Sometimes chicks do that.” Matt hears his hair swish as he shakes his head. “But that’s not the point! The point is she gets to decide what she - ‘deserves’. You -” He jabs a finger. “- don’t get to make that choice for her.”

“I’m never going to fall in love with her. That can’t - that can’t possibly be what she wants.”

“How do you know? Look,” He adds, when Matt tilts his head up abruptly. “I’m not trying to - to invalidate your aro-ness, but like, who says ‘in love’ has to be a romantic thing? There’s like, all different kinds of love, and we don’t call every romance-y crush ‘in love’. It’s just - the big, soul mate-y kinds. So who’s to say that can’t be platonic?” 

Matt sits in silence for a moment. “It’s not the same.” He says finally.

“Look,” Foggy sits down next to him. “I’m ace as fuck. You know that. I’ve never - literally, never - been sexually attracted to someone I slept with. That’s fine! I can still enjoy the hell out of sex, even if it’s not for the same reasons. And my partner - well, at least according to Marci, can enjoy the hell out of -”

“Okay, I do not need to know the details of your sex life. I’ve heard way too much already.”

“My sex life is great.” Foggy says dreamily. “But that’s not the point! The point is that my relationship is with Marci is totally fair even if we don’t feel the same way about some things. It’s all about communication, mi amigo! There is,” Foggy insists, with the air of making a closing argument. “absolutely no reason you and Karen can’t be the same way.”

“It’s not - it’s not the same. Sex isn’t supposed to be the foundation of a relationship. Love is supposed to be the foundation of a relationship. And -”

“And it is! There’s nothing that says that love has to be romantic, specifically.”

“So - what? Karen and I - we’d be friends with benefits?” 

“Y’know, that phrase gets a bad rap.” Foggy says. “Whenever people say that in - in movies, it’s two people who - who have a class together, or get coffee occasionally, or work at the same job. They’re - having sex as a holdover for a ‘real’ relationship - I made air quotes there - and, I mean, whatever, that’s fine if that’s what works for them. But friendship - it’s not just the, like, crappy cheetos that you get from the vending machine when you don’t have a chance to go to the grocery store.”

“You know I never eat those.”

“Okay, so I ate a lot of junk food in college, Murdock, bite me. And like, I can enjoy the hell out of cheetos, but they’re not a solid meal. And like, the movies want you to think that friendship is like cheetos, but it’s not. You can build a great meal from friendship. You can make like, a fricken five course dinner out of friendship -”

“Okay, what’s with the food?”

“Y’know, I didn’t eat breakfast because I was in a rush to get over here ‘cause I hadn’t heard from you, alright, so you will take whatever food related metaphors I have to dish out. The point is, you’d jump in front of a bus for Karen and I know she’d do the same for you. Love isn’t the problem here. The fact that both are you are stupidly stubborn and secretive might be a problem, but, you know, I can see you working through that.”

Matt sighs. “I don’t even know where to start.”

“You know, you’re not alone.” Foggy says, putting an arm around his shoulder. “There’s a big aromantic community out there. They’ve gone through all of this already. You don’t have to soldier through it alone.”

Matt smiles. You’re not alone, Matt. You never were. “Yeah?”

“Yeah!” Foggy says, enthused by the fact that Matt is showing some kind of response. “I’ve been doing research, ‘cause somehow that got to be my job. There’s even a word for this thing - Queerplatonic Partners.” He concludes triumphantly

He almost laughs. “You’re making that up.”

“I am dismayed by your lack of faith in my research skills. No,” Foggy continues. “It’s a real thing. It’s - a way to describe relationships that aren’t in, y’know, traditional bounds of friendship - not necessarily because they include sex, but just for whatever reason - but it’s not something that’s romantic. Like, some people will buy houses together or get married or share an apartment and like, cuddle or kiss or whatever -”

“Or open a law firm?” Matt asks.

“Yes,” Foggy says, almost sighing with relief. “Like that.”

“I guess -” He swallows. “I guess that sounds alright.”

Foggy wraps a fresh bandage over the stitches, then sits up so he can put his hands on Matt’s shoulders. “Hey,” He pulls Matt gently into a hug, careful to avoid the injured side. “I love you, dude. No romo.”

Matt chokes off his laugh before it tears open his stitches. “Oh god. That can’t possibly be a thing. Is that a - a thing?”

“A. Yes, and B. If it wasn’t, I’d make it a thing.” 

“You’re crazy,” Matt says. Then, when Foggy moves to start packing up the first aid kit, “I love you too.”

Foggy pauses in between folding bandages. “I just smiled.” He closes up the kit. “Look, whatever you want to call your relationship with Karen, it’s - whatever. But if you do want to get into something sexual with her, you should wait until that heals, because I am not redoing those stitches.”

“Foggy!”

“And like, if she’s going to be seeing you shirtless on a regular basis, you’ve got to tell her about the whole ‘Daredevil’ thing, because dude, you have some serious scars -”

“Foggy!”

“-and I don’t think she’s going to buy you having been in that many car accidents. Speaking of which, you’re still wearing your costume.” Foggy starts poking at the edges, trying to figure out how it fits together. “Where did you find this thing, anyway? And don’t tell me the internet.”

“Well,” Matt says, settling back. “that’s actually an interesting story…”


End file.
